Photo by Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Students cross the Drillfield Monday on the first day of classes at Virginia Tech amid an increased police presence and concern about the carbon monoxide leak Sunday that sickened 25 people.

Related

Audio gallery

• First day back to classes

Video

• A rush for carbon monoxide detectors in the NRV
• Tech student affairs: Relieving stress on the Drillfield

Stories

• Event may spur new laws requiring CO detectors
• First day at Tech feels normal to students
• CO victims treated in pressure chambers

Graphics

• Carbon monoxide sources in the home
• Learn about the effects of carbon monoxide

The conditions of the five most seriously injured victims of a carbon monoxide leak in Blacksburg were upgraded Monday, as town officials started investigating whether landlords can be required to install detectors and hardware stores reported brisk sales of those devices in response to the incident that sickened 25 people Sunday.

At the University of Virginia Medical Center, both Kristin Julia and Kirsten Halik were upgraded from critical to serious condition by Monday night.

The three other women found unresponsive in apartment F of the Collegiate Suites building on Henry Lane were upgraded from stable to good condition at Duke University Medical Center. Elizabeth Burgin, Carolyn Dorman and Nichole Howarth should be able to return home today, said Dr. Bret Stolp, an associate professor of anesthesiology at Duke who specializes in hyperbaric medicine and treated the three women.

Another 18 people were treated and released at Montgomery County hospitals Sunday. Two others reported feeling sick but were not hospitalized, authorities said.

Stolp said the incident emphasizes the importance of having carbon monoxide detectors in buildings where people live.

Others appear to have come to the same conclusion. Hardware stores in Blacksburg and Christiansburg reported unusually brisk sales of the detectors. Heavener Hardware in Blacksburg sold out by 10 a.m. Monday, store manager Ed Kirkman said.

Blacksburg Mayor Ron Rordam, who spent time at the site Sunday, said he bought a monitor for his home Monday and sent out his thoughts and prayers to the hospitalized women and their families. He said Town Attorney Larry Spencer is researching state law to determine if Blacksburg Town Council has the authority to require installation of carbon monoxide monitors in apartments and other rental properties.

Blacksburg has had a rental inspection program in place for several years, but by state law it must target only old and deteriorating rental properties. Collegiate Suites is a newer property and does not meet the criteria for the program, Planning and Engineering Director Adele Schirmer said. The apartments were built in 1998. Authorities have said the leak appears to have been from a faulty valve in a water heater in apartment F's utility closet that caused the heater to run nonstop.

Documents related to building inspections of Collegiate Suites, Maple Ridge town homes and Hunter's Ridge apartments -- all owned by the same company -- were being consolidated Monday and sent to the Blacksburg Police Department, Schirmer said. The Roanoke Times did not have immediate access to any of those documents.

Calls to the Blacksburg police for the status of the investigation into the incident were not returned Monday.

Executives with Collegiate Suites owner CSB LLC III of Virginia Beach and affiliated companies University Development Inc. and DMI Communities also did not return calls for comment Monday.

The incident has at least some in the property business looking into whether their tenants are protected enough against carbon monoxide.

Reggie Britts, property manager with Raines Property Management in Blacksburg, said that when he first saw reports of the incident, "I was concerned about the other management company and what they might be going through and the people involved, of course. Then, your thoughts kind of turn to: Can this happen to us?"

Britts said that even though he viewed such an event at one of his clients' properties to be unlikely, his company will analyze all of the more than 500 properties it manages to see whether any of them need carbon monoxide detectors.

If they do, Raines will send the properties' owners notices recommending the installation of detectors.

About midday Monday, Britts said three property owners with apartments, duplexes and town homes in Blacksburg had already called his office asking him to install detectors.

"We're going to try and get them done by the end of the week, depending on the availability" of the detectors, he said. "I imagine there's a big run on them."

Britts said some properties managed by Raines might already have carbon monoxide detectors, but there has been no organized plan to add them to properties in the past.

Blacksburg is one of many towns that will soon be giving away carbon monoxide alarms to the needy though an initiative from the Virginia Department of Fire Services. Department spokesman Mark Buff said people with lung or heart ailments, the very young and the elderly are most susceptible to the gas. "But we're all prone to these dangers no matter what your age, what your health. If there's carbon monoxide present in your home, that's potentially deadly."

The leak led to the evacuation of the building one day before Virginia Tech's fall term began.

Kristin Carr, who lives on the first floor of Collegiate Suites, said late Monday afternoon that she hoped to be back in her apartment today. "At this point, since we don't know any information, I don't know how long it'll be before we'll be able to live there again," she said.

That confusion -- and the news that five of her neighbors remain hospitalized -- combined to cast a pall over Carr's first day back at Tech.

"I'm excited to be back," she said. But "at the same time, it's sad to think that the girls living in the apartment above us haven't been able to experience the same."

In the midst of running off to new classes, the Tech sophomore has also had to find time to return to her apartment to collect more belongings.

"It's definitely a strange start to the week," she said. "It's a change getting used to apartment life in the first place, and not to be in your own place and not to have your clothes or necessities, that has been kind of a hassle."

Carr said Collegiate Suites offered to put evacuated residents up at the Holiday Inn in Blacksburg, but she stayed at a friend's apartment Sunday night and expected to stay there again Monday night.

Mental health experts who were already concerned about how students would cope with returning to Tech, given the mass shooting near the end of the spring term, said Sunday's event could add to people's anxiety.

"As we try and establish some safety and security, it's just another challenge to that," said psychologist Harvey Barker, director of emergency and adult clinical services at New River Valley Community Services. "It's the cumulative effect that we worry about."

Amy Forsyth-Stephens, director of the Mental Health Association of the New River Valley, urged people to seek counseling if necessary.

"This kind of thing will make people feel especially vulnerable," she said. "Virginia Tech students, especially, may feel vulnerable."

Staff writers Albert Raboteau, Duncan Adams, Angela Manese-Lee, Anna Mallory, Greg Esposito, Donna Alvis-Banks, Lindsay Key, Jared Turner and Tonia Moxley contributed to this report.